I asked Marina Goldfield this exact question on my latest podcast episode. Marina has 20 years of hands-on experience in biological manufacturing.

Her answer was unequivocal:

"Absolutely everything needs to be written down. There is no level of detail that's going to be too much. In my experience, it's always not enough."

Marina explained that teams consistently discover missing details after problems occur: "You always figure out at the end like, oh, we should have written this down."

The root cause? Not having detailed conversations during the tech transfer process.

When it comes to cell culture, Marina emphasized: "It unfortunately all matters and it's all cumulative. All of these little changes collect together and have a synergistic effect."

For biotech companies approaching their first tech transfer: Don't underestimate the level of detail required. What seems like "obvious" knowledge to your team can be the missing piece that causes expensive batch failures downstream.

The takeaway: If you're questioning whether to document something - document it. According to Marina, there's no such thing as too much detail in tech transfer.